Don't Block the Exit, Light Up the Return
Inspired by on Lenny's Podcast
Instagram learned that making logout harder just frustrated users. Making login easier brought millions back. Same principle applies when your kid storms off to their room.
Bangaly's team discovered Instagram was losing 10-12 million users a year who logged out and couldn't get back in. The obvious fix? Make logout harder. But in South Asia, they learned people NEEDED to log out - shared phones, prepaid data plans.
Instead of blocking the exit, they lit up the return. Simple login that accepted email, phone, OR username. A text saying 'trying to log in?' after two failures.
With kids, the same principle holds. You can't stop your toddler from storming off. You can't prevent your teenager from needing space. The door will slam. The retreat will happen.
But you CAN make coming back easy. Don't turn 'I'm sorry' into an interrogation. Don't require a full explanation before reconnecting. Let them save face.
'We don't want to restrict people's ability to log out because there are many people who need to.'
Sometimes they need to leave. Your job is to make sure they can always come back.
PM Theme: Reducing friction / user experience
Parenting Theme: Keeping communication channels open
“We don't want to restrict people's ability to log out because there are many people in the world who don't want to use background data because they're on prepaid phone plans or they don't have a lot of money and they want to share their phone with a sibling.”Bangaly Kaba · 01:21:14
“We were able to solve this... this actually helped drive publicly 15, 20 million extra monthly active users a year.”Bangaly Kaba · 01:22:40
